Currently employed molecular biology laboratory protocols are laborious, throughput-limited and suffer from low sensitivity and specificity for low analyte concentration detection. Proteomic and nucleic acid array technology itself has revolutionized the practice of life sciences research, providing quantitative information on complex biological systems in a fraction of the time required by traditional methods. However, the application of such technology for quantitative measurement of biomolecules has been limited by the high costs and laborious techniques associated with radioactive and fluorescent labeling and detection. In addition, such assays also pose additional problems associated with the use and disposal of radioactive labels.
In traditional assays, the protein or DNA arrays are flooded with a solution containing labeled target biomolecules, incubated overnight, rinsed, and then “read-out” using fluorescence detection methods. This is not only time-consuming, but still requires large sample concentrations. On the other hand, direct, label-free detection techniques, such as surface plasmon resonance exhibit lower sensitivity and throughput, thus making them unsuitable for detection of very low concentrations of the target analyte. Hence, there is a need for a platform that would provide increased sensitivity and specificity (for low concentration detection) and increased throughput (parallel detection), and would allow a direct detection technique that has a small amount of analyte consumption and short assay time, while still being low in cost.